Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC) has probably the biggest medical tourism marketing budget in the world. It has recently announced it will be working closely with a network of medical travel agents in target markets, serving as its extended arm to run marketing and promotional activities and to raise the destination’s profile.
MHTC has said it is launching an Affiliate Membership Programme to continue training medical travel agents to provide the best medical travel experience.
For 2022, the country has a medical and health tourism revenue target of RM800 million (US$189 million). Selected target markets include Indonesia, Greater China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UK.
The medical travel agent marketing plan is within the MHTC Blueprint 2021-2025, focusing on building on existing offerings and enhancing the Malaysia Healthcare experience through niche branding initiatives tailored to target markets.
Other international marketing initiatives include Malaysia Healthcare Expo 2022 Jakarta (MHX 2022 Jakarta), recently held in partnership with some of the nation’s leading private hospitals and state tourism representatives to showcase a wide range of healthcare services and offerings to medical tourists from Indonesia. MHX 2022 in Indonesia’s cities of Surabaya and Medan will follow soon.
MHTC will also organise its annual global insigHT2022 in the second half of 2022. This conference aims at encouraging collaboration between industry players across various sectors of the medical travel value chain, to reinforce the country’s profile as a safe and trusted destination for healthcare.
MHTC has said it will continue forging industry resilience via stronger public-private partnerships with stakeholders and industry players to rebuild medical tourism in a sustainable manner. The Council works with the Ministry of Tourism, Tourism Malaysia, the Immigration Department, Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Health as well as agencies from the private sector in healthcare, wellness, hospitality, tourism and transport.